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The Book of Imaginary Beings

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The Book of Imaginary Beings Penguin Books The Book of Imaginary Beings Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires in and was educated in Europe. One of the major writers of our time, he has published many collections of poems, essays, and short stories. In , Borges shared the International Publishers’ Prize with Samuel Beckett. The Ingram Merrill Foundation granted him its Annual Literary Award in for his ‘outstanding contribution to literature’. Recently, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters,honoris causa, from both Columbia and Oxford, and the same year won the fifth biennial Jerusalem Prize.Time has called him ‘the greatest living writer in the Spanish language today’, while theNew York Herald Tribune has described him as ‘unquestionably the most brilliant South American writing today’. He is Director of the Argentine National Library. Norman Thomas di Giovanni is an American now living in Scotland. He worked with Borges in Buenos Aires from to , and, to date, has produced six volumes of Borges’s verse and prose in English. Jorge Luis Borges with Margarita Guerrero The Book of Imaginary Beings Revised, enlarged and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author Penguin Books Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia El libro de los seres imaginarios First published in Buenos Aires Translation published in the U.S.A. First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Published in Penguin Books Copyright © Editorial Kier, S.A., Buenos Aires, Translation copyright © Jorge Luis Borges and Norman Thomas di Giovanni, Assistance for the translation was given by the Center for Inter-American Relations Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Reading and Fakenham Set in Linotype Pilgrim This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint the following material: ‘An Animal Imagined by Kafka’, reprinted by permission of Schocken Books Inc., fromDearest Father by Franz Kafka, © by Schocken Books Inc. ‘An Animal Imagined by C. S. Lewis’ and ‘A Creature Imagined by C. S. Lewis’, reprinted by permission of C. S. Lewis, fromPerelandra , © by C. S. Lewis. Published by The Macmillan Company, New York, and The Bodley Head, London. ‘A Crossbreed’, reprinted by permission of Shocken Books Inc., fromDescription of a Struggle by Franz Kafka, © , by Schocken Books Inc. ‘The Odradek’, reprinted by permission of Schocken Books Inc., fromThe Penal Colony by Franz Kafka, © by Schocken Books Inc. The following pieces first appeared in Newthe Yorker, October th, : ‘A Bao A Qu’, ‘The Barometz’, ‘The Celestial Stag’, ‘The Chinese Dragon’, ‘The Elves’, ‘Fauna of Mirrors’, ‘Haniel, Kafziel, Azriel, and Aniel’, ‘The Hundred-Heads’, ‘The Leveler’, ‘The Lunar Hare.’ ‘The Nymphs’, ‘The Pygmies’, ‘The Rain Bird’, ‘The Shaggy Beast of La Ferté-Bernard’, ‘The Sphinx’, ‘Swedenborg’s Angels’, ‘Swedenborg’s Devils’, ‘Thermal Beings’, ‘Two Metaphysical Beings’, ‘The Western Dragon’. Contents Preface Preface to the edition Preface to the edition A Bao A Qu Abtu and Anet The Amphisbaena An Animal Imagined by Kafka An Animal Imagined by C. S. Lewis The Animal Imagined by Poe Animals in the Form of Spheres Antelopes with Six Legs The Ass with Three Legs Bahamut Baldanders The Banshee The Barometz The Basilisk Behemoth The Brownies Burak The Carbuncle The Catoblepas The Celestial Stag The Centaur Cerberus The Cheshire Cat and the Kilkenny Cats The Chimera The Chinese Dragon The Chinese Fox The Chinese Phoenix Chronos or Hercules A Creature Imagined by C. S. Lewis The Crocotta and the Leucrocotta A Crossbreed The Double The Eastern Dragon The Eater of the Dead The Eight-Forked Serpent The Elephant That Foretold the Birth of the Buddha The Eloi and the Morlocks The Elves An Experimental Account of What Was Known, Seen, and Met by Mrs. Jane Lead in London in The Fairies Fastitocalon Fauna of Chile Fauna of China Fauna of Mirrors Fauna of the United States Garuda The Gnomes The Golem The Griffon Haniel, Kafziel, Azriel, and Aniel Haokah, the Thunder God Harpies The Heavenly Cock The Hippogriff Hochigan Humbaba The Hundred-Heads The Hydra of Lerna Ichthyocentaurs Jewish Demons The Jinn The Kami A King of Fire and His Steed The Kraken Kujata The Lamed Wufniks The Lamias Laudatores Temporis Acti The Lemures The Leveller Lilith The Lunar Hare The Mandrake The Manticore The Mermecolion The Minotaur The Monkey of the Inkpot The Monster Acheron The Mother of Tortoises The Nagas The Nasnas The Norns The Nymphs The Odradek An Offspring of Leviathan One-Eyed Beings The Panther The Pelican The Peryton The Phoenix The Pygmies The Rain Bird The Remora The Rukh The Salamander The Satyrs Scylla The Sea Horse The Shaggy Beast of La Ferté-Bernard The Simurgh Sirens The Sow Harnessed with Chains and Other Argentine Fauna The Sphinx The Squonk Swedenborg’s Angels Swedenborg’s Devils The Sylphs Talos The T’ao T’ieh Thermal Beings The Tigers of Annam The Trolls Two Metaphysical Beings The Unicorn The Unicorn of China The Uroboros The Valkyries The Western Dragon Youwarkee The Zaratan Index Preface As we all know, there is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition. The compilation and trans- lation of this volume have given us a great deal of such pleasure; we hope the reader will share something of the fun we felt when ransacking the bookshelves of our friends and the mazelike vaults of the Biblioteca Nacional in search of old authors and abstruse references. We have done our best to trace all our quoted material back to original sources and to translate it from the original tongues - medieval Latin, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Lemprière and the Loeb and Bohn collections have, as is their wont, proved most helpful with the classics. As for our invincible ignor- ance of Eastern languages, it enables us to be grateful for the labours of such men as Giles, Burton, Lane, Waley, and Scho- lem. The first edition of this book, containing eighty-two pieces, was published in Mexico in . It was called then Manual de zoología fantástica (Handbook of Fantastic Zo- ology). In , a second edition El- libro de los seres im- aginarios - was published in Buenos Aires with thirty-four additional articles. Now, for this English-language edition, we have altered a good number of the original articles, cor- recting, adding, or revising material, and we have also com- piled a few brand-new ones. This latest edition contains pieces. We extend warm thanks for their help to Marian Sked- gell, of E. P. Dutton, and to José Edmundo Clemente, As- sistant Director of the Argentine National Library. Buenos Aires, May j.l.b.n .t.di g. Preface to the Edition The title of this book would justify the inclusion of Prince Hamlet, of the point, of the line, of the surface,n of-di- mensional hyperplanes and hypervolumes, of all generic terms, and perhaps of each one of us and of the godhead. In brief, the sum of all things - the universe. We have limited ourselves, however, to what is immediately suggested by the words ‘imaginary beings’; we have compiled a handbook of the strange creatures conceived through time and space by the human imagination. We are ignorant of the meaning of the dragon in the same way that we are ignorant of the meaning of the universe, but there is something in the dragon’s image that fits man’s imagination, and this accounts for the dragon’s appearance in different places and periods. A book of this kind is unavoidably incomplete; each new edition forms the basis of future editions, which themselves may grow on endlessly. We invite the eventual reader in Colombia or Paraguay to send us the names, accurate description, and most con- spicuous traits of their local monsters. As with all miscellanies, as with the inexhaustible volumes of Robert Burton, of Frazer, or of Pliny,The Book of Imaginary Beings is not meant to be read straight through; rather, we should like the reader to dip into these pages at random, just as one plays with the shifting patterns of a kaleidoscope. The sources of this collection are manifold; they are re- corded in each piece. May we be forgiven any accidental omission. Martínez, September j.l.b.m .g. Preface to the Edition A small child is taken to the zoo for the first time. This child may be any one of us or, to put it another way, we have been this child and have forgotten about it. In these grounds - these terrible grounds - the child sees living animals he has never before glimpsed; he sees jaguars, vultures, bison, and - what is still stranger - giraffes. He sees for the first time the bewildering variety of the animal kingdom, and this spec- tacle, which might alarm or frighten him, he enjoys. He enjoys it so much that going to the zoo is one of the pleasures of childhood, or is thought to be such. How can we explain this everyday and yet mysterious event? We can, of course, deny it. We can suppose that children suddenly rushed off to the zoo will become, in due time, neurotic, and the truth is there can hardly be a child who has not visited the zoo and there is hardly a grown-up who is not a neurotic.
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